Prepare your VAT return

Open Tax → VAT and pick a period. The nine boxes are worked out from what you've already recorded:

• Box 1. VAT on your sales invoices, on bank receipts you explained as income with a VAT rate, and on money you recorded as received with a VAT rate and no invoice. Credit notes reduce it, and so does a payment you recorded as repaying such money.
• Box 4. VAT on your bills and expenses (and supplier refunds reduce it).
• Box 6 and 7. The net value of those sales and purchases, in whole pounds. Zero-rated and exempt lines count; lines outside the scope of VAT don't.
• Boxes 3 and 5 are worked out from the others. Boxes 2, 8 and 9 only apply to trade with the EU under the Northern Ireland protocol; they stay at zero unless you add an adjustment.

Under cash accounting, VAT counts when money changes hands: an invoice appears when the customer pays, split across its VAT rates in proportion (after a credit note, in proportion to what is still unpaid). Under the flat rate scheme, box 6 is your gross turnover, box 1 is your flat rate percentage of it, and box 4 only holds VAT on capital goods of £2,000 or more that you've ticked as Capital goods.

Open What's in this box under any box to see every invoice, bill, expense, payment and bank receipt behind the figure, with the VAT rate applied. Under cash accounting you may also see lines marked "rates re-apportioned": when a credit note on an invoice with more than one VAT rate leaves nothing to pay, or is larger than the unpaid part of one rate, it moves what had been counted between the invoice's rates, so the totals follow the invoice net of its credit notes.

The VAT Checker

Before you mark a return as checked, the checker lists:

• Needs fixing. Things HMRC would reject, such as a period that hasn't ended or missing VAT settings.
• Check before you send. Unexplained bank transactions in the period, money recorded as received with no VAT rate (it is in no box until you choose one under Income with no VAT rate on this page), money recorded with a rate and no invoice from a customer whose invoice is still open (the sale may be counted twice: delete the payment and record it again against the invoice), invoices issued in the period for a customer with a payment recorded earlier without an invoice (a deposit counted once when you recorded it and again by the invoice), draft invoices or bills, purchases without a receipt, corrections above HMRC's limit, negative boxes.
• For information. Nil returns, corrections included, invoices not yet paid under cash accounting, payments out in an income category that name no receipt (they take no VAT out of the return).

Fix what needs fixing, tick I've reviewed the warnings above once you're happy with the rest, and choose Mark as checked. If anything changes afterwards, the return shows Changed since checked so you know to look again.